


better left unsaid

by leprixx



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blind Character, Other, Trauma, Warning: Kate Argent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-09
Updated: 2013-11-09
Packaged: 2017-12-31 22:50:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1037313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leprixx/pseuds/leprixx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Let's say Laura gets to Beacon Hills and the only family she has left is a trace of smoke, a proof of fire - Peter burned out in a hospital, as weak as a human, weaker than most; Derek with his eyes flashing blue and unseeing, wolfsbane bullet crushed between his trembling half-shifted fingers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	better left unsaid

Derek falls in love with Kate Argent's smile. Derek falls in love with the drapes of fabric against her tanned skin, the way her nails curl on the soft of her hip, the way her hair flows from her lean neck to her straight shoulders. 

(Let's say Derek, sixteen and despite himself still such a green boy, as green as summer, as ripe as spring, falls in love with a beautiful older woman who promises him everything and instead takes his everything away)

\--

Kate makes sure Derek stays away from the house the day of the fire. She's with him as his family burns, spits truth like venom and has the cold barrel of a gun bruising the space between his eyes as her lips brush the soft of his jaw with "And they'll burn, because of you, because of your silly little ideas of self-worth"

\--

Laura becomes an Alpha when she's eighteen and beautiful. Laughing with her friends as her life burns, diner walls painted in reds and golds for hunger and thirst, and back then she knows this because of her wednesday class in consumer psychology, back then she knows of hunger and thirst the same way children do, the way teenagers pretend to, the way wolves hold themselves back when the moon is full and high in the sky.

She knows that, her life in facts and sweet-sour memories, and between a sip and the next of her strawberry milkshake, she knows of hunger and death and power, devastating power, crushing power, hunger for more and thirst for blood - she assumes blood, she assumes her own, she doesn't know of revenge, not yet. One moment laughing about that one silly boy who liked to wink at her in lectures, and the next imagining the soft of his flesh under her teeth, the glow of his eyes as a wolf, the adoration of him as her beta, her own. And it hits strong, stronger than a wave and sparser than a storm, fear and the need to run, to find - and there's also the thrum of terror that it's sharper than hers, deeper, tugging at the back of her neck and swirling into tiny, terrified, alone Derek, with his protruding front teeth and strange ears.

So she gets up and runs and her friends all stare, scared, and try calling her but she's runningrunningrunning and when she gets to Beacon Hills all she can smell is smoke and home and ash and death and guilt rolling off Derek as strong as his betrayal, as strong as hate -

She runs into her little brother and knocks him down, closes clawed hands around his pale-as-death (pale as horror, pale as guilt, pale as an orphaned boy) skin that stretches thin over his neck and presses, harder when he doesn't struggle, harder when his cheeks get wet with tears. And softer, when he still doesn't look at her, gentler when his eyes continue unseeing at the sky behind her, with shaking-human-powerless hands when she smells the wolfsbane in him, burning, blinding.

\--

(Let's say Kate Argent laughed a last laugh against the still-not-sharp of Derek's cheekbones and left him with a gun and a single bullet, wolfsbane a promise, an escape. A last death, coerced but not an action, not quite.

Let's say Laura gets to Beacon Hills and the only family she has left is a trace of smoke, a proof of fire - Peter burned out in a hospital, as weak as a human, weaker than most; Derek with his eyes flashing blue and unseeing, wolfsbane bullet crushed between his trembling half-shifted fingers.)

\--

Laura takes Derek back with her, panic still in her lungs, panic and smoke, and she finishes her degree, she graduates while her little brother stays home and sees nothing, says close to nothing, fights none of her orders, sleeps when she's clutching him to her like an Alpha starving for pack and listens to the city outside when she's not there to keep him entertained, trains his body until it's bigger and larger and menacing. 

It's a day like any other when the email comes, Laura sprawled on the couch watching a stupid horror movie and still wearing her work clothes, uncaring when Derek presses his face into her lap and his nose into her stomach, curling around her like pack should, listening with little intent as Laura describes what the characters of the film do and opening his mouth obediently when Laura shoves popcorn at him.

Her laptop dings and Laura groans, dislodging Derek as she leans forward to take it from the coffee table, shoving him around until Derek is leaning on her side, forehead on her shoulder and grumpy expression on his face.

"You just got home" He mumbles, nudging her but not raising his hands to stop her. "You don't have to answer their stupid questions."

"I'm their manager, stupid, the one who'll take the fall if they fuck something up." Laura clicks the little gmail tab and drums the fingers of her free hand on Derek's thigh while she waits for her email to load. "And since the man of the house isn't working, someone has to provide." She mocks, patting him when he growls.

"Why would you even say sexist things you don't believe in?" Derek complains, this time working a hand up to pinch her ear. It's nice, how he doesn't take offense, how after all these years he can now take her teasing like he used to, back when they were both betas with golden eyes and easy aggression. 

Laura growls playfully back and cuffs the back of his head, laughing when he dodges her and accidentally falls off the couch, huffing and not moving from his spread-limbed position on the floor.

Her laptop dings again and she looks at it, breath stopping when she sees that the new email is from _deaton.vet_ , a single image attached to it. She clicks it and feels Derek's hand clamp over her kneecap, his claws breaking her skin when the image loads and her heart starts thundering in her chest. 

\--

It's a deer with revenge carved in its flank, stinking of rot where it lays, dead, on one of Deaton's examination tables, dogs and cats hissing at the two werewolves standing carefully away from it, Laura with her eyes narrowed and Derek with his nose wrinkled in disgust. 

"It was a wolf." Laura says, Derek behind her but not touching, trying to appear aloof and normal, sunglasses strange as they reflect the fluorescent glow of Deaton's ceiling lamps. 

"I feared so." Deaton pursues his lips, then exhales slowly, trying to quiet the spike in his heartbeat. 

"And we have to deal with it." Laura says finally, stepping back, Derek barely catching himself from stumbling before righting himself.

"As the last remaining Hale-" Deaton doesn't seem to notice the way his words make Laura still and Derek tense, but maybe he does. Maybe he takes pleasure on it, or doesn't care. "And Alpha of Beacon Hills, yes, you have to take care of it."

Their snarl is instinctual, ugly, synchronized. 

"Are you implying-" Laura takes a step forward and feels her eyes flash red, the itch on her fingertips, claws begging to come out and tear, take, mute. "How can you fucking dare- Who are you to say that of my brother, my beta, my-"

"I think you should leave." Deaton says back, and it's a suggestion if not for how the scent of wolfsbane suddenly starts coming off him, dangerous and poison.

Laura gives him one last snarl before taking Derek by the wrist and dragging him outside. 

\--

"For being Mom's emissary, he's a fuckass" Laura says, shoving fries in her mouth and glaring at the trio of teenager boys gawking at her cleavage. 

Derek hums in agreement, taking a careful sip of his coke before inching his plate of fries towards Laura, not really hungry with how wolfsbane seems to still be choking his airways, with how Deaton dismissed his existence simply because he's fucking blind-

"I hate Beacon Hills." Laura continues, interrupting his train of thought and self-disgust, her voice low and vicious, "I hate that we have to come back, I hate jerkface Deaton and am seriously hoping whoever fucked the deer up was actually sending Deaton a message."

"If we're lucky." Derek agrees, but they're not. 

"God, shut up. It's like I can hear you think." Laura sprays ketchup on the middle of Derek's plate and drags a fry through it. "You're such pessimist."

"It could be worse," Derek shrugs, hand hovering over the table until he finds Laura's untouched glass of coke and steals it, clutching it with both hands and smiling crookedly when she makes a noise of protest. "He could be your emissary."

"Ugh, stop." Laura groans and throws a fry at him, laughing when Derek splutters in indignation and some of the stolen coke spills on his hands. 

\--

"Don't make that face." Laura shoves at Derek's shoulder, making him stumble further inside the room and closing the door behind her. "It's either this or the car-" She kicks him when he opens his mouth to retort. "And we're not sleeping in a car, I'm not working my ass off monday through friday for that."

Derek shows her his teeth, mock-threatening, before taking his sunglasses off and walking through the room until he finds the bed, throwing their bags to the floor and yanking his sneakers off before rolling on the bed's patterned comforter with a disgruntled expression on his face. "We could just stay in the woods."

"Together with whoever is using deers for their art class? Right, you smart snowflake." Laura takes her laptop from its bag and starts it up, setting it on the small table at the corner of the room and kicking her shoes off before straddling the chair backwards. "I'm going to have a look at some work stuff and then I'm going to run the perimeter." She stifles a yawn on the back of her hand and ignores Derek's protests. "Don't make me order you" She says, without much gusto. Ordering Derek around had been fun for the first few months until it was not, his shoulders always hunching beneath the power of his sister-turned-Alpha, his stubbornness deflating into guilt every time Laura had to speak loud and serious.

"Don't go too far." He says at last, voice muffled in a pillow, toes twitching inside his grey socks.

"I won't" Laura concedes, soft, thinking of Derek barefoot and terrified, that night all those years ago, only his toes peeking from the ball of blankets he had turned into the first time they were ever truly alone. 

\--

It's their fourth day in Beacon Hills and Laura's tenth perimeter run when she smells the wolf, ash and insanity leading her in circles around a big stump of a tree in the middle of the woods before disappearing close to one of the roads leading downtown. Derek doesn't comment much when she tells him about it, only curls closer to his Alpha and pretends to be grossed out by the fact that she's sticky with sweat.

Laura clucks her tongue at him and makes a show of licking his forehead, enjoying the way he squirms but doesn't really pull away, laughs when he whines her name and digs his fingers in her ribs, easy silly-small-boy and none of the stoic buff man he's trying to achieve being.

The next day she smells the wolf again, when the sun is still a suggestion on the horizon and her breath is coming in puffs as the animals in the wood interrupt their morning routine to scurry out of her way, follows it close to the hotel but then no further in than the last three miles to their dingy entryway.

"I was thinking we should go visit." Derek says, when she opens the door. Laura throws him a glare and then remembers he can't see, feels horrible about it on top of the tension of the wolf coming so close to where her beta spends his days. 

"Visit who?"

"Uncle Peter" He says, voice small from where he's sitting on the room's only chair, hair disheveled and tank top still a bit damp from when he probably spent the last hour trying to bulk up even more. Laura doesn't like that, either, how her brother insists on growing broader than her, how he thinks that looking strong will be somewhat better than fitting inside her arms.

"We can go tomorrow, after I come back from my first run." She says, and forgets to ask if he heard anything while she was away, if he sensed wolf or danger. 

\--

They never make it to visiting Peter at the hospital, because Peter comes to them instead. Laura has her heart beating in her throat when she gets his scent, starting at the motel's parking lot and then up the stairs, inside their door, to where the wolf is standing over Derek, shifted and burnt, skin of his face horribly distorted by violence and Argent, smelling of Hale, anger, murder and not-there.

She doesn't think past the chant of Derekderekderekderek knotting her stomach, doesn't breathe again until she has her claws through Peter's throat and what was left of his power flowing up her veins and healing her wounds, Derek clutching her to him so tight she thinks he'll never breathe again, she hopes he'll never stop saying her name with such reverence and love.

\--

They bury Peter with wolfsbane, their hands bleeding, Laura wiping sweat from her eyes and Derek letting his tears run, still unseeing, still following her lead even though all he wants is to stop and run, to leave and never come back.

"We're not leaving." Laura says, reading his thoughts, no to a question that wasn't asked but didn't need to. She pushes Derek aside and starts covering the body with earth, dirt as a ghost clogging her nose and tumbling down her throat. She blinks and she thinks she sees Peter ripping her life out with his claws on her neck, she blinks and Derek is an Alpha, Petter dead at his feet, she blinks and Derek is staring in her general direction with his face full of betrayal and fear. "We're not" Said like an Alpha, how she hates to.

Derek nods, eyes green and dull.

\--

The price of their whole family burning down to ashes doesn't stop inflation, doesn't negate taxes. It buys them a small house at the polar opposite of the clearing their mother and father and uncle burned to ashes in, so it's okay. No second floor and no basement, just a whole sturdy spread of wood and too many rooms.

Laura arranges it all through the cheapest lawyer she can find, calling her job when Derek is showering and trying to negotiate recommendations from half a country over. The local sheriff, blue eyed and weary faced, comes to them and asks about Peter, offers his condolences, smiles tired and indicates a place when Laura asks him about stone floors.

Two days later and the floor is cold stone, littered with protection runes that were scratched on it by claws and desperate Alpha, covered by rugs and Laura's shoes.

\--

Their first night is spent curled up together on the safest corner of the house, their second on a bare mattress, third each on their own bed and room, fourth and forth together again on the house's biggest room, Laura with her front to Derek's back and his feet warmed by a expensively soft red blanket.

The house is cold, impersonal as Laura goes back to managing a kitchen again, her cries soft and guilty at night while Derek pretends to sleep and they have so many rooms for so little use, the house is so empty, their routine so permeated with grief and guilt is a wonder they don't crumble under it.

\--

It's five months from Peter. Sometimes they forget about him, sometimes Laura dreams of being cut in half and left to rot.

Not today, though. Today Derek is looming over Laura's shoulder as she tries to make lunch, nose buried in her nape while she sings some stupid song and he hums along, not happy but close, and there's a noise from outside, a wheeze and a laugh and stumbling footsteps and then the doorbell, 

and outside is a boy who shines like a spark and another who smiles like he's never been hurt before.

**Author's Note:**

> [n: sorry this was out of control it was supposed to be a quick "what if derek turns blind from trauma and then laura isn't killed by peter" but i think i got emotionally invested help  
> jj: YES]


End file.
